The Savage Frontier

The Order of the Gilded Eye

Lady Germond Goldvayne

Description:

As the third of the Goldvayne children, Germound never stood to inherit much with their parents’ death. She was heartbroken when it happened, but held one dream of her parents in her heart: to establish the Goldvaynes as nobility.

Her parents were killed in the same accident that took the lives of Caltarison Ethrim’s wife and son. As the courts saw it, her parents were responsible for their deaths. For two years she worked on Caltarison, only to find that the grief the nobleman had hid a spiteful heart against her family.

Germound tried to get herself engaged in other circles, to marry their family up. What she learned was the noble politic of Waterdeep. Nothing is achieved, and nothing is arranged, without each party getting what they want. The heartlessness of it was that it required a certain callousness, and finding that no noble bachelor in Waterdeep would dare marry her for fear of Ethrim’s wrath, she came up with a business deal of her own.

Germound approach Caltarison Ethrim, and when he refused to speak to her, knowing her purpose for arranging her way into every major noble house over the last years. He informed her that no matter what she tried to get the Goldvayne nobility back, he’d squash it. If it were up to him, the fines for his wife and son’s murder was too lenient. He would see to it that the Goldvayne name was erased from Waterdeep history.

That’s when she answered him, “Fine. I’ll marry you.”

In disbelief, he asked her how she ever thought they could marry. She explained to him that it was her father’s wish that Goldvayne achieve nobility, and merging their two families was a step in that direction. She also grew to understand the ambition that nobility required, and as she saw it, her older sister, Kitish, was selfish and self-serving. Thus, Germound wished to have a hand in Goldvayne affairs.

Ethrim asked her how she expected to do that. She explained to him that if they married, then she would be the wife of one of the most powerful families in Waterdeep, and as such, she could influence her sister’s decisions and have control over her family’s business without half of the headaches. What Ethrim would get in return was a partnership with one of the best ore and transport merchants in the north. Whatever he needed from afar, Goldvayne could get.

This piqued the elf noble’s interest, as his holdings were from much further east. He then asked her again, “Why should I marry the daughter of the man who killed my family?”

Germound answered him, “Because I will bear you a son. And I will endure whatever punishments you see fit for my family, but only on me.”